Bluetooth Speakers

It’s gift-building season and I got these done for my sons just in time. My original plan was to use a wireless speaker kit sold by one of the big woodworking supply houses. It would have been a simple project; the kit has a single speaker and a control panel, all pre-wired. Unfortunately, the kits were backordered and not expected to arrive until after the new year.

I found 2 inch speakers and small bluetooth audio boards on Amazon instead and tackled the project from scratch. The box is built from walnut (top and bottom), maple (sides and feet) and swamp ash, of all things (front and back). The ash is supposed to have good acoustic properties.

I cut the box joints on the table saw with a stacked dado set. I gang the sides together and cut two joints at a time. That last photo is me trying to make sure the second set of cuts don’t leave me with some kind of Esher-like unbuildable box.

The front and back are only a quarter inch thick—not enough to screw the speakers to the face. I epoxied them in place before I remembered that hot glue guns exist. The audio board is held in place with hot glue, as is the power cord (for strain relief).

The board has six little buttons for various functions like play/pause, skip, rewind, etc. and one large button for power/bluetooth pairing. I gave up on the little buttons (most of them are duplicated in software anyhow), but needed a way to turn the unit on and off. After a sleepless night, I came up with the turned dowel, which works pretty well.

I finished the units with two coats of tung oil. A third would have been nice, but Christmas is a deadline that just doesn’t move.

The sound quality is pretty good, enough so that I want to build one myself. Next time around, I’d elevate the board inside the unit (to make the power switch shorter), provide for some kind of ventilation and take more care with the speaker wiring. I’d also add a rechargeable battery pack to make the thing portable.

At the time of this writing, they’re selling for about $16. Another member here pm’d me with a link to parts-express.com, which has quite a large selection of dyi amp boards and speakers—more than what I was able to find on Amazon at least.

We had one of these on for a while after opening gifts, and the only downside appears to be a limited bluetooth range, probably because the receiver is encased in wood.